


Anyone's Ghost

by pendragonness



Series: 00Q mini series [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Developing Relationship, Flirting, Fluff, M/M, who knows what else; I haven't thought that thoroughly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 14:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendragonness/pseuds/pendragonness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of those times when Bond would rather bother his Quartermaster than go to Medical</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anyone's Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> The first of a small collection of brief 00Q fics I've written over the past couple months. They're not meant as one story, they came individually in little drabbles, but there's no reason they can't go together. Only three 'parts' right now; impossible to know if there will ever be more. This I wrote up a couple months ago, shortly after first seeing Skyfall. It's definitely the longest of the three stories I have so far. Not terribly original, but a bit fluffy and it was nice to write. 
> 
> Oh and I haven't posted any sort of fanfic on any site in at least a year and a half, likely longer. I certainly haven't posted on AO3 before, so I'm a bit nervous, but it's all for fun and I've gotten tired of letting everything waste away on my hard drive.
> 
> \---

“Don’t you still have a bed-time?”

  
The young Quartermaster didn’t even flinch - let alone turn around - at the drawl behind him, the first voice to break the murmur of his keyboard in the past four and a half hours. “Don’t you have somewhere more entertaining to be, rather than babysitting your Quartermaster at three a.m.?”

“No, actually.”

  
The retort was too brief to warrant a reply; Q merely snorted softly, his eyes still never leaving the half-dozen screens before him, fingers clacking casually as he checked and re-checked security installments, newsfeeds, and fixed holes the rest of the incompetent MI6 London branch managed to oversee.

  
“Are you going to stand there and drip blood the whole night, or-” he paused, brow dipping a little as he adjusted some numbers, “-or should you go to Medical? They’d be much happier to see you than I am.”

  
Bond grunted. “You know I’ll just make them cross. Or they’ll make me cross. Or both.”

  
“Both,” Q mused idly, his eyes still roving the screens before him for a moment, before he paused and finally looked at the agent standing behind him.

  
007 stood with his hands in the pockets of his pale blue-grey tailored suit, which was torn in at least nine different places, muddy, bloody, and currently adorning a man with a cut eyebrow, bloody hairline and cheekbone, and slightly unsteady stance. The younger man turned back to his computer screens.

  
“Although not half as cross as I’m about to be if you keep bleeding on my floors.”

  
Another soft grunt from the agent.

  
The Quartermaster did his best to ignore the unmoving man behind him, instead tapping slightly more vigorously at his keyboard and muttering a bit to himself. It didn’t last very long though, as within a few minutes, he whirled back around.

  
“Really, 007, M would be furious if he knew you were here without being debriefed.” It was a pathetic attack and Q knew it. “Either go to Medical, or, better yet, go home.”  
“Shouldn’t you go home as well, Q?” The tone was teasing, eyebrows lifted with a tiny curl of a smirk. Q felt his muscles tighten in response.

  
“I’m working.”

  
“At three in the morning, with no one else here?”

  
“Yes.” And with that, Q set his jaw, then turned once again to his computer, slender back to Bond. “Don’t try to change the subject - go home, 007.”

  
“Actually, I haven’t been checked out by Medical, but I am pretty sure they wouldn’t want me alone at my flat with a concussion.”

  
“I never made a threat to concuss you, Bond,” Q muttered, already half-ignoring the agent in hopes he would leave him be.

  
“That’s not what I said, Q,” James Bond replied tiredly, his voice no longer taunting.

  
The rapid typing slowed, pattered unevenly, and then ceased. Q turned around again, expression unreadable. “You’ve got a concussion?” Bond didn’t see the point in being redundant and made no reply. Q sighed as if this irritated him, but his features relaxed just slightly, showing faint edges of exhaustion. “Naturally.”

  
“I‘m not sure if that‘s the appropriate response.”

  
Q ignored the comment smoothly. “You realize that really means you should get checked.”

  
“I’ll be fine.”

  
“Yes, I’m sure you will,” the man muttered, running a hand through his thick mess of cropped curls. Silence weighed in the room, neither broken by conversation nor the patter of Q at work. He glanced tiredly at his keyboard, sighed, and drummed a few keys before shutting the lid of the computer, the screens around him going blank. “A cup of tea, then?”

  
He didn’t wait for a reply - which he didn’t receive - and instead trotted past the older man, down the short flight of stairs, and around a couple corners to the seldom-used break room. Or at least he assumed it was seldom used; it was true enough the interns around the building didn’t do half as much as they pretended, but he was fairly sure M kept a strict guard on such tempting leisure.

  
Q flicked on the kettle, noting there was plenty of water in it for a cup of tea each, and rifled through cupboards for some tea bags as he heard 007 shuffling into the room.

  
“Your gait’s off,” he observed idly, briefly debating grabbing a few biscuits he’d just discovered. He hadn’t eaten since…..he wasn’t sure. But he was pretty sure he had eaten at some point the day before. Fairly sure.

  
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re wasted on those computers,” Bond sighed, coming to a stand-still in the small, white room and watching the younger man pull a box of chocolate biscuits from the cupboard. “It was just a bit of a fall.”

  
“A bit?”

  
“Fifteen feet, at most. I landed wrong.”

  
“Yes that much I gathered.”

  
Kettle done, Q set about tossing bags in a couple mugs and letting them steep, his nimble fingers flying almost as quickly while making a cuppa as they did over keyboards.

  
“Milk, sugar?”

  
“Yes.” Beat. “No, I mean no.”

  
Q merely glanced at the tired agent, then went about following the latter command, setting one mug down and pouring a little milk into his own. He sat and abruptly tore open the box of biscuits, taking a bite out of one and chewing as he stared up at the man opposite him.

  
“Sit, 007.”

  
Bond sighed, pushing the mug on the table around until it was placed with the chair beside Q, rather than across from him. The young Quartermaster noted this with a slightly cocked brow. The agent sat, staring at the darkening water in his mug.

  
“What’re you doing still working this late? Or, early.”

  
Q shrugged one thin shoulder. “Fixing menial things. Nothing, really.”

  
“Then why are you here at three a.m. if it’s nothing?”

  
The younger man didn’t answer, taking a slow sip of his tea, soft, hazel eyes watching Bond carefully from beneath unkempt bangs. Bond stared back.

  
“So is most of that your blood, or someone else’s?” It was a horrible question, but it turned the conversation away from himself.

  
“I can’t say I’m sure,” Bond sighed, blinking slowly, his shoulders having sagged, as though his body was suddenly realizing the beating it had taken.

  
“Well you should clean up. I hear dried blood is garishly uncomfortable.”

  
“Well I think you look just fine.”

  
Q’s brow dipped infinitesimally. “Pardon?” The other man cocked his head slightly, brows raised, as if waiting for Q to explain instead.

  
“Are you alright, 007?”

  
Bond closed his eyes for a brief moment in response. Q could’ve sworn he literally saw more lines etch their way onto the weathered man’s face. “I’ve got a brilliant headache, but other than that- I’m fantastic,” His eyes opened again, focused on Q already, and the young Quartermaster saw that Bond meant whatever he was saying - he may be bloody and half-broken and exhausted, but as a whole, he felt fine. He wasn’t sure if this impressed or frightened him.

  
There was silence for a breath as Q’s mind clacked away as quickly as any computer, before he stood up and made his way over to the small sink. He ran the tap, waiting a moment for it to warm, and then pulled a hand cloth from a cupboard, wet a corner of it, and sat back down. He angled himself toward the MI6 agent and shifted forward, until the chair slid a little closer. Bond eyed him carefully.

  
“What-”

  
“Here, clean some of the blood off yourself-” the young Quartermaster handed the wet towel to Bond, who took it with a faintly unsteady, bloody-knuckled hand.

  
The agent attempted a cool glare at being nursed by a computer-whiz kid who looked to be half his age - it didn’t work very well, as he winced when his trembling hand bumped the split at his left cheekbone.

  
“What happened to your hand?” Q practically sighed the question, as if irritated by realizing something more was wrong with Bond.

  
“Fine, ‘s fine.”

  
“Hm,” bright hazel eyes swept over him again, and cool, thin fingers latched onto his wrist, pulling the roughed-up hand toward him. “Did you sprain it?”

  
“Probably. Actually I might have even managed to break that finger there,” the agent pointed with his opposite hand to his ring-finger in Q’s delicate grasp.

  
“Congratulations,” the boy answered dryly, before removing the wet towel from Bond and reaching forward himself. He hesitated just in time. “Can you use your other hand?”

  
Bond snatched back the towel in an almost tug-of-war way, but winced immediately at the sudden movement. He lifted the cloth to his head, but Q wasn’t blind to the way his jaw locked in discomfort.

  
“Give me that,” he instructed quietly, his tone somehow conveying enough authority for the agent to comply. “And what’s the problem now?”

  
Bond hesitated, but upon Q’s further incredulous glares, sighed and carefully used his sprained hand to push aside the shoulder of his jacket, revealing his steel-grey tailored dress-shirt to be stained dark crimson at his shoulder.

  
Neither of them said anything, Bond‘s cool blue eyes waiting to be reprimanded, challenging, even. Q‘s face remained unreadable in all but his eyes for a split second, which churned with thought and discomfort, before his boyish face composed itself. He simply set his lips into a firm, displeased line. “Should I do it? Do you mind?”

  
Bond eyed the kid carefully, as if looking for an ulterior motive. “D’you think M will get cross when he learns you opened his new box of biscuits?”

  
A beat of quiet. “Bond…” Q sighed, shaking his head minutely and muttering, “You have got to stay awake.”

  
With that, he took the damp towel and unceremoniously rubbed away at some blackened-blood on Bond’s temple, earning himself an uncomfortable hiss in return. “You’re fine,” he scoldingly muttered, but was more delicate when it came to the cut beneath Bond‘s eye. When the agent flinched two times too many, Q tossed aside the towel in exasperation. “Nevermind, then. Just trying to do something useful while we keep you conscious.”

  
“I am already conscious, Q.”

  
“And half-delirious, 007. You’ve been mixing up words and spouting rubbish for the past ten minutes, seemingly without being aware. You are most certainly concussed.”

  
“Yes Q, I know I‘m-” Bond was sounding irritated again, a rather good sign, Q thought.

  
“Can I check your eyes?” he interrupted.

  
“What?” Q wasn’t in the mood to repeat the question, and after a moment, Bond sighed in resignation. The young man leaned close again, his head ducked a little as his cool fingers delicately touched around the older agent’s right eye, pulling the skin back a bit so he could better see, his own darker eyes peering from behind his stylish glasses. 007’s unnervingly electric blue eye stared patiently back at him. It was as though the agent had no problem letting Q touch him so closely, even as Q himself felt both sickeningly cold and overwhelming hot at once. He swallowed without actually needing to and the double-oh’s pupils flicked down for half a second, catching the movement. Q felt his very blood shiver. He switched to the left eye for a quick moment, then sat back again.

  
“There’s nothing unusual with dialation in either eye, although admittedly I didn’t subject you to any light-adjustment tests, but it may not actually be too severe…” The young man mused for a second, his intelligent eyes roving over Bond’s weathered and beaten face. He sighed, and allowed the edge of his mouth to quirk up just slightly. “Ah, bollocks to what I say, really. This isn’t my area. Finish your tea, and then I’ll drag you to Medical if I have to.”

  
“It’s cold.”

  
“Yes, I’m pretty sure shift in the body’s perception of temperature is another side-effect of the concussion-”

  
“No - the tea. It’s gone cold.”

  
Q glanced over at the mug he had given 007, which was no longer steaming and actually looked rather dark and sad. “Oh! Right, well, I’ll get another for you - you really should get something into yourself - and then we’ll get you sorted out in the medical ward-” He nearly swallowed his tongue as Bond suddenly shifted forward, their bodies angled so that his knee bumped the inside of Q’s thigh, and the older man rested one battered, cautious hand on the ridge of Q’s knee.

  
A cleared throat and then, “Bond,” Q chided carefully, shifting his leg. His quickening heart-rate jolted when the agent rested his other hand on the edge of the table, squaring himself to the young man. He paused for a moment, giving the younger man plenty of opportunity to tell him off. Nothing happened.

  
Bond watched the rise and fall of Q’s chest, uneven in anxiety. He pushed forward until his lips shoved against the fuller form of his Quartermaster’s, tasting the surprised exhale that escaped them. The persistent ache of his body was dismissed as Q’s mouth moved feebly with his own.

  
The scrape of three-day stubble was sharp and alarming to Q, but he didn’t stop the assault just yet. Instead he let his mouth be pushed open by lips more determined than his own, he trembled like a teenager at the sensation of a tongue tracing his lower lip, the ridge of his teeth; his breath hitched when the double-oh agent gently pulled that lip into his mouth, sucking, nipping, just for a brief second before releasing and kissing him full-on again, letting his tongue forcefully play against Q’s. At some point one of Bond’s hands wound itself into his hair - likely not the sprained one, from the grip it had in the thick mop. A gentle tug tilted Q’s head just-so, and he whimpered expressively as Bond did something especially tricky with his tongue. The knee that pressed against the inside of his thigh found its way between his legs, flush against the sensitive crotch of Q’s trousers. The leg shifted as Bond’s body did, and Q grunted, his hips shallowly thrusting once of their own accord.

  
He felt more than heard the soft chuckle from the agent’s chest, and his slender fingers white-knuckled as he gripped the lapels of the suit-jacket, Bond’s sprained hand now carefully cradling his neck while the other remained twisted in Q’s hair. The closeness was overwhelming; trapped against the heat of Bond’s battered body, embraced both tenderly and firmly, feeling his mouth more occupied in the past twenty seconds than it had ever been in his life, Q’s mind was short-circuiting, he felt as though he couldn’t breathe.

  
To turn his face away from the older man’s took more will-power than he would have ever dared admit, but he did so with a soft gasp, his entire body trembling with….different things. The hands in his hair and against his neck tightened gently as Bond breathed softly against the Quartermaster‘s jaw, lips caressing the warm flesh of his throat.  
“That’s quite enough, James,” he murmured, turning his face further away, leaning faintly opposite to the man’s touch. He remembered the slightly-uncomfortably delivered warnings he received in his final days of training for MI6: agents are never what you see, never what they let you know them to be, and always to be treated with caution in the initial days after a mission. One person had even warned him about certain agents’ habits of fucking away the emptiness after the adrenaline-high of a mission, failed or complete. Bond had definitely been on that list. He also knew that sexual orientation was a blurred line for MI6 agents, for necessary reasons. Lucky him.

  
Q took a shaky breath and then cleared his throat, tugging away from the other man’s touch and adjusting his body so that he was angled away from Bond. He straightened his glasses, hazel eyes darting everywhere but the other man’s face. “On your feet, Bond,” he said lightly, standing himself.

  
Sharp blue eyes, bright as lightning, gazed up at him. Bond didn’t speak, just stared, studied; the Quartermaster felt horribly revealed.

  
Q shook his head, face flushing slightly, hoping the man didn‘t see the way he trembled. “You- you’ve got to get to Medical,” He reached down a slender hand, and the agent hesitated for only a second, before accepting it and shifting to his feet, grunting quietly as his aching and beaten body complained at the weariness that was past it’s limit.  
“You alright?” the young Quartermaster asked pointlessly.

  
Bond winced, beginning to limp toward the medical ward. “No.”

-

After a good forty-five minutes of examination and minimum debriefing, James Bond was released from Medical with a damage report consisting of nothing less than shrapnel to the left shoulder as well as dislocation, a sprained right hand with a broken ring finger and fractured middle finger, a sprained left ankle and nasty cut across the left kneecap, laceration to the brow which required three stitches, a black eye, a half dozen other large bruises and small scrapes, and, of course, the prominent concussion.

  
Most of the medical staff - as well as Q - would have preferred to keep Bond under medical care and surveillance for at least the next several hours, but it was also no surprise when the agent steadfastly refused. Under no condition, however, would the head nurse let him leave MI6 by himself with such a concussion. So it was that Q found himself still at MI6 at four-thirty in the morning, fingers not flying across his keyboard so much as rhythmically gliding, his gaze focused on the screens lit before him, and at his feet, leaning against the table he stood before, sat James Bond: back against a leg of the table, his own legs sprawled out in front of him, aching body at ease and his eyes half-shut as the steady tapping of Q’s fingers on the plastic keys became a soothing, reliable rhythm.

  
A gentle foot prodded his elbow and Bond jerked, eyes snapping open and flying up, to where Q stood above him, computer screens reflecting in the lenses of his glasses.  
“No falling asleep on me, 007,” Q chided softly, his elegant voice only half-focused.

  
“I’m fine, Q,” James merely growled in reply, but it sounded more instinctive than defensive.

  
The Quartermaster smirked, one side of his mouth quirking up while he still worked away at his computer. “Yes,” he observed quietly, “I know.”


End file.
